


Turn The Memory To Stone

by alilactree



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Dancing, Drinking, Feelings, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 11:23:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11312370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alilactree/pseuds/alilactree
Summary: Set after 2x13. Also deals with 2x12. Kinda sad, kinda not.





	Turn The Memory To Stone

“You never have to prove yourself to me,” Alec says. He has a thousand other things he needs to say to Magnus, everything has been so fucked up lately, _he’s_ been so fucked up lately, but all that comes out is a strained and stuttered, “I love you.”

And Magnus, who has every right to still be angry instead, cups Alec’s face and says he loves him too and kisses him. Alec grips Magnus by the hip and shoulder and kisses back, here on this patio that’s become a sanctuary of sorts for the both of them, together and separately.

Alec pulls away and rests his forehead against Magnus’s, taking a moment to just breathe and be. He can feel the tension still in Magnus’s body, the way he stands just slightly away from Alec instead of leaning into him. “You’re still angry,” Alec states lightly.

“A little,” Magnus admits. His tone is gentle, though, sad more than anything.

Alec licks at his lips, thinking of what to say, and realizes he tastes something smoky-sweet and alcoholic. “You’ve been drinking.”

Magnus pulls away at that, but a small smile plays at his mouth. “A little.” The grin slips, and sadness returns. “Or, a lot.”

Magnus has endured so much heartache lately, and the reality that Alec played a part in that heartache because he’d ignored his instincts, disregarded his own heart, yet again. The weight of that sits heavy and dark on his shoulders. “Magnus, I—“

Magnus stops Alec’s incoming apology with a wave of his hand. He steps inside, his back to Alec. He doesn’t want to talk about. He doesn’t need to hear Alec apologize again, though Alec feels he could say it a million times and it wouldn’t be enough. Instead he tries a different approach, saying lightly, “Well, it sounds like I have some catching up to do. What are you drinking?”

Magnus’s responding glance is hard to read; his expression is flat, his eyes steady on Alec. He looks beautiful, heartbreakingly so.

“Whiskey,” he finally answers. “But I’ll make you something else.”

“Okay.” Alec answers easily. He’ll take whatever Magnus is willing to give him.

Magnus whips up something using both magic and not. Alec watches his hands move, the incredible, sure, elegant way he inhabits his body. What sort of horror it must have been to not be, Alec can’t imagine. He doesn’t know how to fix it, and Magnus doesn’t know what to tell him. Maybe he can’t. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe he just needs to be here.

“An Old Fashioned,” Magnus says, handing him a drink. Alec thanks him and tips the glass to his lips. It’s sweet, but not.

“We’ll find something you like yet,” Magnus muses, amusement dancing in his eyes at whatever Alec’s face must be doing.

It’s a promise for the future. Their future.

They don’t talk much; Alec drinks and Magnus mostly putters around restlessly. He drags ringed fingers along the horn of his old-timey record player, and Alec watches intently with the alcohol beginning to stir hot in his veins.

“Do you dance?” Magnus asks, then answers himself, ruefully. “Of course not. You’re a shadowhunter. A very serious and devoted one, at that.”

The dig is warranted, but it still stings. “I don’t dance,” Alec confirms, “But maybe I’ve just never had anyone to show me how.”

There’s a beat of silence between them, a moment that could go either way, depending. Magnus rubs his middle finger against his thumb, Alec draws himself up to his full height.

“If I took you somewhere, would you dance with me?” Magnus asks. Unsaid is his real question: _Do you trust me?_

“Yes,” Alec says.

When they step from the portal in an alleyway, their hands stay clasped. Alec was expecting Pandemonium, given the outfit Magnus changed into. It’s not. It’s a gay bar, Alec isn’t sure in what city, but most definitely a gay bar.

“I feel under-dressed,” Alec shouts over the pounding pulse of the music inside. Magnus, with his silky red shirt unbuttoned to his sternum, skin tight pants, heavy eyeliner and multiple necklaces and rings isn’t even the most extravagantly dressed. By far. “Maybe I should have worn a mesh tank top.” Alec jokes, nodding to a group of men in the center. They’re nice looking, despite the mesh clothing, and Alec lets himself look, without shame. That’s a bit of revelation, for him.

“Hmm, that does paint a rather nice picture,” Magnus replies in a muffled pause between the music, looking Alec blatantly up and down. “But I think I prefer you as is.”

Alec smiles widely. He doesn’t hear that very often. Magnus smiles ruefully back and sighs. “It’s very hard to stay angry with you, Alexander.” The music blasts again, and Magnus says something else that Alec can’t hear, so he tugs Alec onto the crowded dance floor. There are bodies writhing everywhere around them, male bodies, attractive male bodies, writhing against each other and for a moment Alec is stricken, frozen in place.

What the hell is he doing?

But Magnus takes both of Alec’s hands, places them on his shoulders, then sets his own hands on Alec’s hips. He presses in, chest to chest, moves his shoulders and Alec’s hips in time to the music, then leans in to say into Alec’s ear, “Back and forth with the beat. Just like that. Easy.”

Alec tries, following the movement of Magnus’s body with his own. He feels stiff and strained. Magnus, however, looks as if his body was made to move to music. Liquid and slinking against Alec, his hips grinding against Alec’s with the beat of the song, his breath hot against Alec’s ear.

Alec may well combust on the spot.

He strips off his lather jacket, and Magnus magics it away. No one notices. He moves behind Alec, now plastered chest to back, hip to ass. His hands slide up Alec’s chest, mouth set against Alec’s neck, and together they move with the pulse of the music.

Alec closes his eyes, tries to focus on dancing and nothing else, but Magnus pressed against him like this, the way his fingers trail across Alec’s chest and stomach, down his hips and thighs and— It’s too much. “Magnus,” he cranes his head to speak, and Magnus catches him in a hot, hard, off-center kiss. Alec groans into it, unable to stop himself. If Magnus keeps this up something very embarrassing is going to happen very soon.

Magnus releases him, spins him around, and presses in close again, chest to chest, hip to hip.

“Magnus, I’m—“

“I know.”

Magnus slows their movements, out of rhythm now, their own dance. He cups Alec’s face and leans their foreheads together, just as they had been out on the porch. “Magnus…” Alec whispers, unsure of what he intends to say next. But Magnus closes his eyes and replies, “I know.”

Whatever Magnus had hoped to happen here doesn’t seem to have worked out as he’d planned. The melancholy returns to his eyes and when the music quiets again he takes Alec by the hand and says, “Lets go home.”

Back at home, in bed, Alec holds him. A mirror of the way they’d danced at the club, with Magnus tucked back against his chest, Alec’s arms wound tight around his torso. They don’t speak, but Alec gives him the space and security to feel whatever Magnus needs to feel.

He hopes that’s enough.

“I love you,” he says. He hopes that’s enough, too.


End file.
